“We are
at the cusp of a dramatic breakthrough, a historic peace with Saudi Arabia”,
Netanyahu said as he stood before a mostly empty plenum during the high-level
session that marks the opening of the 78th General Assembly.
“Such a peace will go a long way to ending the Arab-Israeli
conflict. It will encourage other Arab states to normalize relations with
Israel. It will enhance the prospects of peace with the Palestinians,”
Netanyahu said.
On a global scale, he said, “It will encourage a broader
reconciliation between Judaism and Islam between Jerusalem and Mecca between
the descendants of Isaac and the descendants of Ishmael,” he added.
Netanyahu,
long known for his reliance on props at the United Nations held up two maps of
Israel and the region so that the audience could better understand the historic
transformation that was about to occur.
The
first showed a map from 1948, the year of the creation of the state when it was
attacked by all its Arab neighbors which showed how Israel was alone in the
region.
“Here's Israel in 1948. It's a tiny country, isolated,
surrounded by a hostile Arab world. In our first seventy years, we made peace
only with Egypt and Jordan,” Netanyahu said.
Then he held up a modern map that already reflected the
change that occurred in 2020 when Israel normalized ties with four of its Arab
neighbors under the US-backed Abraham Accords, as well as what could occur if
Saudi Arabia joined that circle. He took out a red marker and drew a circle around
those countries.
“The whole Middle East changes. We tear down the walls of
enmity. We bring the possibility of prosperity and peace to this entire
region,” Netanyahu said.
He recalled that he had used the same red marker at the UN
plenum when highlighting the danger of a nuclear Iran.
“Today, today I bring this marker to show a great blessing…
of a new Middle East, between Israel, Saudi Arabia and our other neighbors. We
will not only bring down barriers between Israel and our neighbors.”
Netanyahu
addressed his vision of a new peace to an almost empty plenum, while outside
activists rallied against his judicial reform program.
It was the end of a week of intense diplomatic activity that
marked his first trip to the United States since taking office at the end of
December 2022.
He
arrived as US efforts were underway to forge a quadrilateral deal that would
center on an agreement between Washington and Riyadh that would include a
normalization deal between that Kingdom and Israel. In exchange, Israel would
be expected to make concessions to the Palestinians.
Bloomberg has also reported that the US is considering a
security pact with Israel as part of the deal.
The Saudi deal has been a major focus of Netanyahu’s trip,
including his conversation on Wednesday with US President Joe Biden.
In an
interview with Fox News, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said that his
country and Israel were closer than ever to a deal and that the engagement on
the matter was serious.
In his UN address, Netanyahu said “I believe we can achieve
peace with Saudi Arabia with the leadership of President Biden.”
He
added, “Working together with the leadership of Crown Prince Muhammed Bin
Salman, we can shape a future of great blessings for all our peoples.”
Netanyahu’s belief that the normalization of Israeli-Arab
ties should occur as the first step toward a resolution of the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict has long stood at odds with the internationally
accepted understanding that a two-state solution must be a pre-requisite to
regional relations.
“For years, my approach to peace was rejected by the
so-called experts,” Netanyahu said, adding that, “Well, they were wrong.”
“Under their approach, we didn’t forge a single peace treaty
for a quarter century” until the 2020 Abraham Accords, Netanyahu said.
Prior to those accords, peacemaking efforts were based on
the false premise that unless we first concluded a peace agreement with the
Palestinians, no other Arab state would normalize its relations with Israel, Netanyahu
explained.
“I’ve
long sought to make peace with the Palestinians. But I also believe that we
must not give the Palestinians a veto over new peace treaties with Arab states.
The Palestinians could greatly benefit from a broader peace. They should be
part of the process, but they should not have a veto over the process,”
Netanyahu stated.
“When the Palestinians see that most of the Arab world has
reconciled itself to the Jewish state, they too will be more likely to abandon
the fantasy of destroying Israel and finally embrace a path of genuine peace
with it,” Netanyahu said.
“A new Palestinian-Israeli relationship, however, cannot be
based on lies and on the endless vilification of the Jewish people,” Netanyahu
said.
He pointed specifically to statements Palestinian Authority
President Mahmoud Abbas made in August in which he said that Hitler killed the
Jews during World War II because of their history with money lending and not
because of anti-Semitism.
“Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas must stop spreading the
horrible anti-Semitic conspiracies against the Jewish people and the Jewish
state. He recently said that Hitler wasn’t an anti-Semite. You can't make this
up. But he did. He said that.”
Netanyahu also took issue with the Palestinian Authority’s policy
of providing monthly financial stipends to terrorists with blood on their hands
as well as to their family members.
“The Palestinian Authority must stop glorifying terrorists.
They must stop its ghoulish pay-to-slay policy of giving money to Palestinian
terrorists for the murder of Jews. This is all outrageous,” Netanyahu said.
“For peace to prevail the Palestinians must stop spewing
Jew-hatred and finally reconciliation themselves to the Jewish state.
“By that I mean not only to the existence of the Jewish
state but to the right of the Jewish people to have a state of their own in
their historic homeland, the Land of Israel,” Netanyahu added.
In addition to anti-Semitism, Iran’s pursuit of nuclear
weapons and its support of global terrorism is the fly in the ointment when it
comes to regional peace, Netanyahu said.
“Rest assured, the fanatics ruling Iran will do everything
they can to thwart this historic peace,” Netanyahu stated.
At home
Iran has killed and arrested thousands of its own citizens and abroad it has
used armed drones and its missile program to threaten its neighbors and has
provided weapons to Russia for use against Ukraine, Netanyahu explained.
“Yet the regime’s aggression is largely met by indifference
in the international community,” Netanyahu emphasized.
The international community must do more to support the
brave women and men of Iran who despise this regime and yearn for freedom,
who've gone out bravely on the sidewalks of Tehran and Iran's other cities and
face death,” Netanyahu said.
In
light of Iran’s enrichment of uranium, he called for the international
community to reimpose crippling sanctions against Iran as promised under the
terms of the largely defunct 2015 Iran deal.
“Eight
years ago, the Western powers promised that if Iran violated the nuclear deal,
the sanctions would be snapped back,” Netanyahu stated.
“Well, Iran is violating the deal. But the sanctions have
not been snapped back,” he explained, adding,“To stop its nuclear ambitions,
this policy must change.”
“Sanctions
must be snapped back and above all, Iran must face a credible military threat,”
Netanyahu said.
He pledged that “As long as I am prime minister of Israel, I
will do everything in my power to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons.”
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